Current pre-cutter arrangements include rotors having tines constructed of planar metal plates mounted in spaced, parallel relationship along a length of a cylindrical rotor member, the tines each including a plurality of crop-engaging points arranged equal-angularly about a rotation axis of the rotor member. The tines are arranged to sweep parallel paths located on opposite sides of stationary cutter knives and crop strippers. U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,694,504 and 6,595,123 disclose pre-cutter arrangements of this type.
A drawback of these prior art pre-cutter arrangements is that the rotor tines are vulnerable to being bent by rocks that are carried with the windrow of crop fed into the rotors for engagement by the tines, with these bent tines being problematic in that they may come into contact with the stationary counter knives and/or crop strippers, which may result not only in the bent tine suffering further damage, but may result in the knives and strippers being damaged as well.
In attempting to address this problem, manufactures have resorted to constructing the tines from materials offering more bend resistance and/or have constructed the tines so as to have a thicker cross section for resisting bending. Bend resistant materials are costly and are hard to weld. Thicker tines result in fewer knives being present over a given width dimension of the rotor, resulting not only in less reduction of the material which passes through the pre-cutter arrangement, but also results in an increase in the weight of the pre-cutter arrangement, thus requiring additional horsepower to propel the machine carrying the pre-cutter arrangement.
The problem to be solved then is that of providing a pre-cutter rotor having tines which are relatively stiff, but do not add weight to the rotor, and which do not require a reduction in the number of stationary cutter knives that cooperate with the rotor tines over a given width dimension of the pre-cutter arrangement.